FirefoxOS, Internet of things (#IoT), the future

A note: This is a serious post, couple of months ago I wrote an article as a joke saying that I am leaving Mozilla project by some reasons, umh, it was April 1st. After that I was insulted by several people “you have left the community”, “we don’t want to work with you”, “we are working only with active people” and even more, not appropriate for the web, so I want to make this clear, this is not a joke, this is something I want to develop in the future and this is how I see it.

IoT (from bottom up)

Police alert.

Imaginе. The future, 20xx. Driving from city A to City B on the highway. Rock music. Loud. something beeps. Beep! Beep! The driver looks at the screen and there is a message:

Slowing down.

The damn traffic jam

The future again. Driving back from city B to city A. Hard Rock! Slowing down! Traffic Jam! No information! Waiting and wondering what is going on.

Beep, beep! A message:

The sender

All these messages has been send by a passing car to your car. Of course in the beginning they will be set from the driver via usable interface (see below), but I think it’s just matter of time to teach the device(or the thing) how to learn and to do some of the tasks without human interaction. Crepy? Not!

Vehicle2Vechicle Communication

We will develop small devices that will be able to exchange and store simple data packages without need of connecting to the Internet.

Vechicle2 Device Communication

We will develop simple FirefoxOS app to communicate with near devices via discovery. Like:

Reading the messages that your car receive from other cars on the highway

Set the privacy setting

Find nearest devices and communicate with them – discover what the can “talk” about and enter the conversations.

IoT with Firefox OS

I believe we can create an interconnected network of devices that can be able to communicate with each other and with us using a special protocol.

Let’s call it TTM (Talk to Me).

Alll devices will be powered by Firefox OS

All apps will be developed using web technologies.

You will not need Internet access to be able to communicate with one or more devices, but they can still connect to the Internet to exchange data.

Privacy first – you can set what you want to share and with whom.

An open platform where everyone can contribute.

Oh, one more:
Early Morning. Monday. Enter the tram with TTM sticker on your way to work and the tram asks you “how do you feel today”, you said “It’s monday” and the tram offers you a nice selection of music while traveling just to be make your day better.

The interface.

Since clicking and double clicking is dead and I think ‘touch’ will follow soon we will implement 2 more interacting interfaces – Voice (Remember my Fosdem talk in 2010 when I made the the demonstration on how to control Firefox with your voice?) and Gestures.

More to follow. #IoT definitely is the future for me, but I really don’t need a “smart” fridge, I need “smart” things that make my life easier and save time and money and of course powered by Firefox OS and Web Technologies.

5 responses to “FirefoxOS, Internet of things (#IoT), the future”

Complete spitballing off the top of my head, without much thought… What about subscribing to groups/networks that I’m allow to receive from.
One thing that comes to mind with the broadcasting between cars scenario is the potential for abuse. If I tell my app that I limit messages to xyz groups, then when it sees a message from a group I’m not interested in, I don’t see it.
Types of groups could include:
– Ones that I create, where I say I’m willing to receive messages from specific individuals
– Ones that anyone can join and broadcast to. Perhaps “The Cautious Drivers of Central Florida”
– Ones where only one individual or a limited set of individuals can broadcast. Useful for things like Amber Alerts or school announcements.

Maybe all of this is obvious or silly or implied above somewhere, but thought I’d share the thoughts.